The First 60 Seconds: How Elite Leaders Read a Crisis Scene

When a fire truck rolls up to a scene, the crew has 60 seconds to read the situation before committing and the same clock is running in every business crisis you'll ever face. Brad Hauck breaks down the five questions elite leaders ask in those first critical moments: what's showing, what's hidden, what you have, what's most at risk, and what to do right now. Waiting for perfect information isn't caution, it's how the fire wins.

Transcript

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Welcome to Leadership in the Line of Fire with your host, Brad Hauck. Join Brad as he dives into the heat of leadership challenges, where the flames of business uncertainty meet the hard-earned lessons of firefighting. Embrace change, master agility, and become the trusted leader guiding your team through the smoke. Get ready to ignite your leadership journey. Welcome back to Leadership in the Line of Fire. When our trucks roll up to a fire, we've probably got 60 seconds to read the scene. We're looking at smoke color, the wind direction, where it's heading, and everything else that's going on. If we get it right, we possibly save lives. Get it wrong, bad things can happen. Your business is no different. Sales can drop, key people quit, markets shift, you lose clients. You've got a very short amount of time to make the call. Often when you're facing problems, and most leaders freeze. They wait for more data. They schedule meetings. Meanwhile, the fire spreads, causing havoc. Today, I'm going to go through 5 questions we ask on the fire ground when something happens. Questions that separate leaders who have control of the crisis from those who get burned by it. Because perfect information is a luxury, and by the time you have it, it's too late. Before we dive in, if you want to go deeper into these fire ground leadership lessons, grab a free copy of my book, Run Towards the Flames, at tinyurl.com/firefighterbook. tinyurl.com/firefighterbook. It's packed with stories and strategies from over 20 years of fighting fires in Queensland bush and leading a successful business. All right, let's get into it. There's been plenty of times that I pull up to a fire and there's so much going on. We're unsure of who's in charge because we can't see anything. There's smoke everywhere. We can't see where the fire started, but we can see where it's heading and we don't know what to do because of the lack of information and the ability to make decisions. Over time, once we've spent a bit of time there, we start to be able to piece things together. We find out who the IC is. We find out who the sector commanders are. We put together the fire, and if we're first on scene, we've got to make the decisions as the leaders of how we're going to actually tackle the fire. So as a first officer on scene, often we'll need to name and claim the job, and then we need to assess the fire and put a plan in place. So how do we deal with this in a real-world situation? Now, it doesn't matter whether it's a fireground situation or a business situation. The practices are pretty similar, and I found these apply all through things. So the first thing is we need to look at what's showing. What are the visible signs of what we see? As a firefighter, I'm looking at smoke color, flame height, all sorts of other things that are happening there that I can see with my eyes. So the first thing as a business owner, you need to look at smoke signals. What are the things that are indicating to you what's going on? So falling sales numbers, customers leaving, team members upset. These are all warning signs. On the fire ground, obviously it's the smoke itself. We are looking at what that's doing. Is it being blown left or right or up or down? It tells us a lot. And those indicators in your business tell you a lot too. The second thing after we've had a look at the smoke and what it's doing is we need to look around. We need to size up the incident. Is this a small problem or a big one? Have we rocked up and it's a 10 by 10 fire, or is this a 100 by 500 size fire? It's the same for you. You walk into the boardroom and you start asking questions. Is this a small team having problems, or is it the whole company experiencing this? And that will really change how you approach things, because if it's a small problem, you can isolate it. If it's a problem that goes across the whole company, you may be looking at a cultural shift or something else that's going to affect you as the leader. And until you determine that, until you size up what the issue is and how big it is, you can't move forward. You need to understand what's going on before you can make decisions. The third thing I'm looking at when I turn up to a fire is what's the wind doing? Because the wind affects the fire in many ways. But it is one of the most important factors in fire behaviour. What's happening in your business? Is things changing? Is the economy changing outside your business? Are competitors making moves on your industry or have new competitors come in? Have new rules come into play that you now have to cope with? And maybe that one arm of your business is not coping at all with the new rules. Great example of this is AI. AI has stormed into our lives in business, and it's affecting people in many ways, and people are starting to panic. And I can completely understand that because jobs that were once done by a team of people can be done relatively well by one AI. And that puts a lot of pressure on staff, and it puts a lot of pressure on you because it might be that the team you've got used to do that job and now your clients can do it using AI only. So you become irrelevant. So you need to look at what the wind's doing outside of what you're seeing inside your business, because that will affect everything. So once we've read all the visible signs, we've looked for smoke, we've sized up the fire, what size it is, what's doing, and we've had a look at the wind. We move on to step 2. We need to work out what's not showing. What are the hidden dangers? Often through the smoke on the fire ground, we can't see what the fire's doing if the wind's blowing it towards us. But if the fire's coming towards us, we can tell because the wind is pushing the smoke towards us. There's a lot to be learned from what's happening, but it doesn't mean we can see what's going on. We don't know what fuel's in front of us. We don't know, you know, how deep the fire is. We don't know all these hidden features. And so we need to actually go out and look at that and work that out properly. In your business, it can be things like debts that you've missed, taxation that you owe, angry staff who are not speaking up. In other words, they're keeping things to themselves rather than having the problem dealt with. And that's a major issue because it's hidden from you and you can't see it. So you could have a whole pile of staff who are very unhappy or very scared of what's happening in their industry, but they're not talking to you. What will happen is eventually that will come to the surface and by then it'll be too late to actually save it. So that's why it's really important to dig down and understand what's happening. Often there's old problems. That you haven't fixed yet sitting there, and they're like time bombs. In digital marketing, I know there's little things like upgrading websites. If you don't do it regularly, you leave too much of a gap and then it becomes too dangerous to upgrade without having proper backups and all sorts of steps in place before you do it. So it's really important that you find those hidden things going on and deal with them. Second thing we do is we look at getting a map started on the fireground because we need to understand where the fire is and where it's going, what possible threats, what assets, what fuels are ahead of it, et cetera. So getting a map is a way of seeing what's going on. You need to start looking at what you aren't seeing. Are teams not talking to each other? Is bad news not filtering up through the organization. You need to create a map of what's actually happening in your business. And that may bring in your team leaders or your managers, or maybe even just sitting down with your staff, depending on the size of your business, to actually get them to open up to you. And you need to create an environment where people are comfortable talking. It doesn't matter whether it's firefighters or business staff. The environment where they come forward and tell you what the issue is could be the difference between stopping the fire that's running through your business or in real life, the fire running through the bush or not. You need to have that constant flow of information freely back and forth between you, your commanders, your levels below you, and the people who are right on the front of the fire. Once you've got your map started and you start to get an idea and you can see what's happening, then you need to look at where your weak points are. Where the danger points. When does the small fire become a big fire? It could be burning along in grass that's very short and suddenly there's a large amount of fuel in front of it and the fire will increase in intensity and size. And the danger goes through the roof. When does that happen in your business? Is it when people start quitting? Is it when suppliers stop trusting you? Is it when you no longer have the trust of your people? You need to be able to see where that's coming and don't let it get to that point. If you know that it's heading that way, you can head it off by putting steps and processes in place to work with it. Number 3, what do I have to work with? Once we've gone to a fire and we've sized it up and we've worked out what's going on, what are our hidden dangers, we actually need to understand our resources. How many trucks do I have access to? Where's the water point? How are we going to feed these people? There's all sorts of resources involved. From a business perspective, what's your team right now? Who's here today? What can they actually do? Who showed up and who didn't show up? Do you need to call in certain people to do the job to fix the problem? It may be that you don't have the right people in your team at the moment to actually solve the problem. Maybe you need to get someone from outside, or maybe you need to contact that person who's just left and hire them back. Whatever it is, you need to make sure that you've got the right team here now to deal with the issue, the fire that's racing through your business? What equipment do you have? So it's great to say, I've got a fire truck, but there's many different types of fire trucks and they carry different types of water. In your business, do you have money left in your budget to purchase the tools you need to solve the problem? Do you already have the tools to do the work or don't you? Do you need to upgrade your tools? Maybe you're using an out-of-date version of software. When if you paid the extra money, you could actually do something more efficiently, more time-wise. When is your next meeting? Meetings are also part of your toolkit, part of the equipment to make sure things are moving forward. You might have a meeting once a month, but maybe it should be every 2 weeks. Maybe it should be every week for 10 minutes, or maybe it should be every day for 5 minutes. It depends on your business. If you've got a major problem, you need to be meeting more often. The longer between meetings, the more things float along. And the reason is that most people get caught up in the other stuff that they're doing and forget to deal with the problem. And we're all guilty of this. I'm guilty of this in my business as well, where I've been caught up in one thing and missed something else, and it's cost me dearly. So make sure that if you've got to have meetings, you're having them on a regular basis. And lastly, who's your backup? You can't stay there 24 hours a day. On a fire ground, we certainly have to go in shifts because of fatigue, and it's no different in the real world. Fatigue takes its power. Fatigue has an effect on your body and your mind. You can't think clearly. So who can you call? Do you have board members you can call? Do you have consultants, lawyers, partners? Who is it that can come in and cover you or step up to take control of the situation when you're called away or you've got to go home. It may mean that you've got to sort your shifts out, but you need to know who you can rely on, who's your backup for when things continue on longer than expected. We have backup crews, we have replacement crews, and we have different shifts. They're really important. And one thing I've learned is you need to get those people in early because if you wait till late to call in crews, you won't get the ones you need. Whereas if you call in early, you can actually get people because they've got time to prepare. Fourth step is what's the biggest threat? You need to actually break down what the biggest threat is at that time. So if I've got fire moving through the bush and it's heading towards a house, the house is an asset, it's someone's home, that is the greatest threat at that time. So protecting that structure becomes very important. More important than having some more bush burn. So you need to look at your situation, work out what you need to do, and leave the other things till after that is taken care of. Sometimes it's a case of dividing your forces, so you send some people over to the house to protect the house and the others onto the flanks to start working on the fire. But it really will depend on what resources you have available, and that's why you need to know what your resources are. Before you start dealing with your biggest threats. You need to protect the vital stuff. You need to look at what your money-making products are, make sure that you've got the right staff there. You need to talk to your best customers and work with your star employees. Who can't you afford to lose? Sometimes you can afford to lose some resources because they're not doing their job properly, but there are certain resources, certain people in your team that you cannot afford to lose. You need them and your success depends on them. Watch for chain reactions in your business. Chain reactions where something happens and then it causes something else to happen. And normally they're negative things. So if you don't protect this area of the fire ground, then you'll lose that house and then that house, then that house. It'll move along through the houses. If one customer leaves, do they take other customers with them? If one person quits, does the whole team underneath them fall apart? As I said, those people can be really vital, not just because of what they know and all that, but what they can do and how they hold your organization together. So remember to look at that. You cannot afford to have chain reactions. And you'll see it often. Now, sometimes it's a good thing when someone leaves. You lose a bad person and you lose some of their team that follow them. That's good because you may not want them there and they're causing problems. And if they all leave at once, that's fantastic. On the other hand, when you lose someone who's essential and they've been trying to talk to you, trying to tell you what the problem is, it's heartbreaking and it can really tear you apart because you start to question your ability as a leader. Because you failed someone so important. Sometimes you've just got to let things burn. As I said, there's some staff that you could gladly get rid of, and if they go, it's not a bad thing. You can't save everything all at once. You need to choose what to protect. It may be that the rules have changed, that legislation's changed and it's affecting your business. It might be that you need to write off one arm of your business and go, this is no longer any good to me. It is no longer profitable. We cannot afford to keep spending money here. We need to look at this arm of the business or this product because it's worthwhile us pushing into it. You need to make the choice on what to sacrifice, and you have to do that purposefully. In other words, you need to make sure that you are thinking about it, you've agonized over it, and you have good solid reasoning for cutting something off. Sometimes you lose assets. That's just the way it is. You can do everything right and still lose them. You try not to. That's the goal of certainly as a firefighter is not to lose assets, but there is times when it's too dangerous to actually protect the assets and personal safety comes first. It's no different in business. You have to choose what are you going to protect to protect yourself and your business. What do you need to get rid of? Number 5, and the most important thing, what do I do right now? You need to make your first move. Certainly that happens in the first 5 to 10 minutes of us turning up to a wildfire. So this is the most important one. Action beats perfect plans when things are burning. Sometimes you just got to make the call and go with it. Go with your gut, go with the best information you've got at that time. In my understanding, if you've got 70% of the information that you really need, you've got enough to make a good decision. It won't be perfect. It might not be the right one in the long term, but it is the best you can do. If you do not make a decision, then you do not show that you're in command. You need to take command and tell your people that you're in charge or show them you're in charge, certainly from a business perspective. It's clear then to them who to call, who to refer to. Then tell them what the plan is. Make sure you tell them clearly and what their first step is. So everybody knows what you're going to do, how you're going to do it, and who's going to do what. Because everybody needs a job. Now, in this case, generally you talk to your team leaders, or I talk to crew leaders, and I'm telling the team leader, You're responsible for this. You're responsible for that. I need you over here. I need you over there. By giving people specific jobs, it means they are now responsible for certain areas, and that's important. People want something to be responsible for, and if they have that section and they're communicating with the other team members, then they can actually deal with it. You can't deal with everything. That's not your job as the leader. Your job as the leader is to lead. Send your best people to the worst problem. This is so important. On the fire ground, you've got a choice of, I don't know, 5 trucks, 10 trucks, 20 trucks, but you need to be able to send someone you can trust to do the job to lead a certain task. Why? Because if you send any crew down there, they may not have the experience to deal with the problem. And if they don't have the experience, then they really don't know what to do and they'll be asking for help. It is better to pull someone off one place and put them on somewhere else and get them to take charge of that job than it is to send someone inexperienced in there. Put the inexperienced person underneath them. It's a learning opportunity for them, but don't leave them in charge because they will flounder and they will fail and you can't afford to fail. You put your A-team on the biggest threat immediately, even if things might change. You can always move them later on if you want to. That's fine. But you need to know that if you've got someone doing structural protection, in my case, that they are going to do it and they know how to do it. In your business, you need to know if you give someone a job, like they need to prepare information for a website, that information will be prepared. In the way it's supposed to be written and delivered to the designers so that it can go up on the website. Give it to someone who can get the job done. Old saying, busy people get things done. It's pretty true, but on the other hand, the most experienced people are generally the best people to do the job. And the last thing we need to do as part of this is to set our next check-ins. We want situational updates on an ongoing basis, and we don't mean in a week's time. It might be every hour. I want I want a report from the field. I want to know what Sector Alpha's doing, Sector November's doing. Or in business, I want to know what the designers are doing and the programmers are doing. And I want to know on a regular basis. It might be daily. It might be weekly. It's up to you. Again, it depends on how bad the problem is. If the problem's really bad, you may want hourly updates. For example, if I have a website that's crashed, hourly updates are really important because an hour is a long time when a website's down. So it will depend on what the fire in your business is, but if you need to do it, set a timer, which is what I do on my wrist, and it counts down every hour, buzzes on my wrist, and it reminds me that I need to get an update or send an update. So keep checking and keep adjusting to the problem until it's dealt with. The truth is, on the fire ground in business, the first 60 seconds through to 10 minutes decide if you're going to control the crisis or it controls you. You won't have all the facts. You won't have all the perfect information, but you do have your training, your experience, and your gut to fall back on. Read the scene, make the call, then adjust as you go, because waiting for perfect information means the fire wins. If this episode has helped you see something in a new light, share it with someone else in your brigade or on your business, and make sure you subscribe. We've got more real-world, fireground, ready, and business-based leadership tools coming your way. I'm Brad Hauck. This has been Leadership in the Line of Fire. Stay safe, lead well, and don't forget to grab a free copy of my book, Run Towards the Flame, at tinyurl.com/firefighterbook. I hope you enjoy it. I'll talk to you in the next episode. Thank you for tuning in to Leadership in the Line of Fire. If today's episode sparked some insights, please share it with your friends. Friends and colleagues. Don't forget to hit like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Your support fuels this journey. Join us next time as we continue to explore leadership lessons from the fire line. Until then, keep leading with courage and agility.